e came over us, broken occasionally by one of us saying suddenly--

"Ebbene, siamo qua!" ("Well, here we are!")

This sort of thing formerly used to make me feel nervous; it was as
though I had failed to entertain my friends or as though they had given
up the hope of entertaining me. After experiencing it several times,
however, I came to take a different and more accurate view. There was no
occasion to do or say anything. We were enjoying one another's society.

Vanni told us he was thinking of taking a cargo of Marsala to England and
what would the English people say to it? Now the Marsala was very good
and, according to Vanni, could be put upon the market at a very low
price, but I foresaw difficulties. Knowing that he had sung in opera in
Naples, Palermo, Malta and many other places, I asked if he liked music.
He said he adored it. Music, he declared, was the most precious gift of
God to man--more precious even than poetry. He had his box at the opera
and always occupied it during the season. And he enjoyed music of all
kinds, not only the modern operas of Mascagni, Puccini and so on, but
also the old music of Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini. I asked if he did
not like _Le Nozze di Figaro_. He had never heard of it, nor of _Don
Giovanni_, nor of _Fidelio_. He had heard the names of Beethoven and
Mozart, but not of Handel, Schubert or Brahms. He had heard also of
Wagner, but had never heard any of his music.

I was not surprised he should not have heard of those composers who are
not famous for operas, nor by his odd list of so-called old musicians,
but I was surprised that he should place music so decidedly above poetry.
I said it appeared to me he had practically expressed the opinion that
Donizetti was a more precious gift of God to man than Dante. Put like
that, he did not hold to what he had said and confessed he had been
speaking without due consideration. But Peppino said that in some
respects Donizetti was a better man than Dante; he was smoother and
better tempered, "and many things like this." Peppino had been brought
up, like every Italian, to worship Dante, but when he went to London and
mastered the English language, when he began to read our literature and
to think for himself, then he saw that Dante was "un falso idolo." Every
nation gets the poet she deserves and Italy has her faults; but what,
asked Peppino, what has Italy done to deserve her dreary Dante? On the
other hand, with all